


into the void

by katsuwrites



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, Infinity War (Marvel Comics), Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 05:35:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14610540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katsuwrites/pseuds/katsuwrites
Summary: What is it like to be the first to know and last to go? Maybe this orange sky holds all the answers.A Peter Parker POV oneshot for the scene that broke all of our hearts. Bonus fix-it: also incorporates the fan theory that souls are trapped in the Soul stone, waiting to be restored again someday.





	into the void

Peter is the first to realize that something is very wrong.

The adults have started shouting again, mostly at the half-human _Footloose_ guy who punched Thanos in the face. The insect lady is standing protectively in between the guy and Mr Stark, who looks as though he's about to return the earlier punch twice as hard.

Between his own guilt over not being able to pull the gauntlet off in time and a renewed tingling of his spider senses, Peter is hardly paying attention to the mayhem around him. 

He doesn't expect his instincts to abruptly swell to a deafening crescendo of terror.

Peter stumbles but stays standing only through willpower, even though he can't think through the blaring signals being sent by his body that he doesn’t know how to interpret beyond primal fear, a dizzying feedback loop of _danger danger danger dangerdangerda-_

‘No!’

There’s a pained gasp from behind, and Peter barely turns around in time to see the nice insect lady’s lightly confused expression as she disintegrates into nothing.

Everyone goes deathly still, and Peter can't breathe through the haze of fear and shock as the beefy grey man and the half-human guycrumble into dust too, ashes dancing in the solar stream as though they were never there.

 _I never even knew their names_ , Peter thinks, wrapping his shaking arms around his stomach. The wizard guy-  _no, Doctor Strange_ , murmurs something to Mr Stark as he too disappears, eyes closed as if in prayer. 

The silent screaming in Peter’s head is louder now. He feels like he’s floating.

‘Mr Stark?’, he says. ‘I don’t feel so good.’

Mr Stark’s eyes immediately snap from the last remnants of Doctor Strange to him, and something finally clicks in Peter’s head as he sees the horrified realization slowly settle into the lines of his mentor’s face.

_I’m next, aren’t I?_

He feels it now, the slow uncoil from deep within his gut and behind his ribs that threatens to pull him right out of existence. 

Peter’s no stranger to dying— he knows it comes with the whole superhero thing. He’s always been one for close shaves and taking risks, secure in his faith that things will always turn out okay. He even likes to think that someday, when his time comes, he’ll walk right up to death and say  _hey buddy, is it time to go already?_  with an easy acceptance of fate, sort of like Harry at the end of Deathly Hallows.

But not like this.

It wasn’t supposed to be anything like this.

He feels himself being pulled apart at the seams like a hapless doll, like a rubber band expending all its potential energy at once as he stretches, stretches into infinity and wonders when the breaking point is. 

There is no pain, and the lack of it scares Peter more than any stab or burn. 

He imagines reeling himself in like a wayward kite on a string being blustered about by a tornado, fights  _hard_ against the unraveling of his core because he refuses to go down otherwise, he knows no other way. 

His head is spinning as he stumbles into Mr Stark’s arms, numbness creeping into his legs and fingers despite his best efforts, and he desperately tries not to think about Aunt May and Ned and MJ and all the things he never got to do, never got a chance to say, and maybe he’d have been okay if only he’d stayed on that stupid bus, and Mr Stark is holding him tightly as though he can hold Peter together by sheer force of their combined will, telling him over and over that he’s going to be alright, kid,  _you’re going to be alright._

Peter wants to tell him, _I know I’m not, Mr Stark, but it’s okay and I’m sorry,_  but his resolve crumbles as he loses his grip on the imaginary kite-string and it comes out instead as choked whimpers of ‘ _Please sir_ _, I-I don’t want to go, please, I don’t want to go’_ , and Mr Stark simply holds him as he shakily clings to comfort and warmth, and he sobs in the crook of Mr Stark’s neck against the growing lack of feeling in his body.

His legs must have given out from under him because Peter barely registers the ground slamming into his back, and more of him slips away by the second. 

He keeps his eyes fixed on the twinkling nebulae in the distance and definitely does not look down at what he knows is his own body turning to dust in the wind, tries reaching for Mr Stark again but he can’t feel his arms anymore, settles for shifting his gaze to Mr Stark’s face instead, and the man is wearing a gaze of despair almost too painful to look at, and Peter just wants to make that frown go away but can’t find the right words out of the scraps of thoughts in his head, lightning-fast flashes of _it's not your fault_ ,  _I_ _should have listened, wanted to make you proud_ , and he knows he’s running out of time to say any of it.

Peter breathes in one last time into empty lungs, whispers to Mr Stark even as nothingness closes in, ‘I’m sorry.’

And then it consumes him, and he is gone. 

* * *

 

Peter doesn’t remember when or how he ended up underwater.

At least, he thinks he’s probably underwater.

One time he visited the public pool with Ned and MJ, and they had a silly competition to see who could hold the longest breath underwater.

This was kind of like that, except without the pressure on his lungs and the lifeguard coming to his rescue when Ned made him laugh fifty-seven seconds in and he’d accidentally inhaled water.

Peter doesn’t feel the need to breathe here, but his body feels like it’s going to rise to the surface without him. 

It’s close now, he can feel the warmth of refracted light on his face, and the dim memories become sharper, crystallizes into shouting. Why are people shouting? And it smells like new cars and blood and there’s the sensation of falling, only this time he’s falling up, up out of here, and he doesn’t know if there’ll be sturdy arms reaching out to catch him this time-

_I’m sorry._

Peter jolts upright with a gasp, hands wildly grasping at nothing but an electric orange sky.

‘Mr Stark,’ he murmurs. No one responds. The sky is as orange as it is untouchable and cloudless, stretching beyond the vast untroubled lake edge that he rests on.

He sighs, taking in the sight with deep breaths, noting the utter absence of flavour in the air. His spider senses are still pinging, and the feeling has settled into an always-present silent tremor in his bones.

Peter checks his limbs, torso and face once, then twice to be sure, and finds himself in perfect condition. It's almost as though their near-win and crushing loss on Titan never happened. That probably means he’s dead, right? But then he pinches himself on the thigh just to make sure and _ow,_ those are definitely fully functional pain receptors. Where is he, really?

The questions rest heavy on his mind as he absentmindedly flexes his no-longer numb fingers. 

Peter reaches up to clutch at his chest, feels his heart stutter along rapidly like it always has, as if saying  _hey it’s me I’m still here I’m alive,_  and he draws his knees to his chest and hugs them because he really doesn’t know anymore. 

 _I wish Mr Stark was here,_  he catches himself thinking, and promptly shakes away the thought because if he really is dead,  _Mr Stark shouldn’t be here because he needs to go back to Ms Potts_ , and the thought of that puts an ache in his chest because he shouldn’t be here either, and he doesn’t know if he’ll ever see his family and friends again, and it’s all his fault.

Peter allows himself to wallow in ten more seconds of this before chasing the dark thoughts away like butterflies.  _What would Mr Stark do?_

He thinks back to the friends who turned into dust before him, the chirpy insect girl and big grey dude and half-human guy and Doctor Strange, and wonders if they arrived in the same orange purgatory as he did. Maybe he could find them, and maybe they’d all figure out how to get back to being properly not-not-alive again.

Latching onto that slim thought of hope like a lifeline, he stands up all too quickly in his eager self-call to action and is rewarded with bursts of white erupting out of his vision as the blood rushes out of his head, and he can’t help a giddy laugh at how  _real_ he feels. 

Maybe he’s still alive after all. Maybe he’ll make it back to Mr Stark and they’ll finally be on proper hugging terms from now on. Maybe he’ll see Aunt May and Ned and MJ again and he can tell them how much he loves them, every single day.  

Peter holds all those  _maybes_ in his still-beating heart as he looks up at the sunset sky, picks a direction, and starts walking.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you're reading this, you deserve a kudos and mighty thanks. This is my first actual completed fic in 8 years and boy was it fun and I hope not too cringeworthy. Feel free to hit me up on tumblr :)


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